The one thing which is not heard from such employers in discussing the question is that Saturday is the day when clerks most need a respite, especially in cities where it is not only the weariest day, but the longest.
Has it occurred to the St. Louis League that the day of heaviest trade bears some relation to advertising? Their reactionary firm probably makes an advertising feature of Saturday bargain sales. This firm ought to realize that in cities where the Saturday half-holiday is most general and successful the Saturday trade has not been lost but has been readjusted by a shift of bargain sales to other days.
The argument based on the working-men’s need has a semblance of truth and might have more if the early closing were for more than the eight or nine Saturdays of July and August. Most working-men can arrange to do necessary shopping at some other time for those few weeks. Many of them in trades which have the eight hour day have the hour from five to six, in addition to the noon-hour daily—and in the case of family-buying there is the wife who is the natural shopper. When the matter came up in Syracuse labor leaders assured the Consumers’ League that the argument had no real basis.
Let us hope that the Consumers’ League of St. Louis may be able to convince its reactionary firm that the approval and consequent patronage of the public the year round is worth as much as its trade in men’s furnishings on Saturday afternoons of July and August.
Emily Lovett Eaton.
[President Consumers’ League of Syracuse.]
Syracuse, N. Y.
To the Editor:
It has always been a puzzle to me why the weekly half holiday, so strongly advocated for store and factory workers, should be Saturday rather than a mid-week afternoon and why all the stores in any city should close on the same afternoon.